New Plan for Immigration

Yvette Cooper Excerpts

Wednesday 24th March 2021 Commons Chamber

[Priti Patel]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right, and I commend him for the work that he has been doing with the Council of Europe. In the past, we have had many conversations about this issue and about people, ways of working and upstream issues around illegal migration. He is right to highlight the issue around the Mediterranean. Too many people have died, tragically, under the most appalling circumstances. I would be more than happy to work with him on how we pursue this further.

[Yvette Cooper (Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford) (Lab) [V]]

Safe Passage reports increasingly long waits for child and teen refugees in camps in Greece and elsewhere to be able to reunite with family in the UK who could care for them since the Dublin and Dubs schemes were ended. Ministers promised us that they would put in place safe legal routes in replacement, but they have not done so, and things are not working. Talking about safe legal routes is not good enough if they do not materialise in practice. Does the Home Secretary not accept that, especially when it comes to vulnerable children and teenagers, a lack of safe legal routes to rejoin family will drive more of them into the arms of dangerous people traffickers and make the situation much worse?

[Priti Patel]

If the right hon. Lady had heard my statement, she would have heard some figures about those who are being trafficked right now. They are predominantly single men. She makes a very valid and important point, which supports the case for safe and legal routes, around children in particular. This is not just about camps in Greece, and let us not forget, of course, that we have been in a pandemic, which is part of the reason, as the right hon. Lady knows—we have discussed it at the Home Affairs Committee—and as many hon. Members know, having been reminded of it again and again and again, the Government are absolutely committed, as the record shows, to resettling children, and to family reunion rights.

That is absolutely right, and we are doing that. We are committed to that, but through safe and legal routes. We need to create new routes, and not just from the camps in Greece. The right hon. Lady will know as well—I have been to many myself—that within regions, where there are wars and conflict, we need to create safe and legal routes, and not just from the Mediterranean. Too many people have been smuggled to that Mediterranean route. We need to do much more in-country, and in some of those terrible zones. I hope that she would support this work on that basis.

Oral Answers to Questions

Yvette Cooper Excerpts

Monday 22nd March 2021 Commons Chamber

[Priti Patel]

My hon. Friend has tapped into my affection for Stoke-on-Trent and done so with great flair. He is right: his constituents are brilliant individuals, and I have been to Stoke-on-Trent many times. They saw sense by voting for more Conservative Members of Parliament at the last election.

We are scoping new locations for a second site for the Home Office, and we are going to go beyond the conventional Government footprint and size. I can confirm that we are looking at long-term plans, and I will share our proposals with my hon. Friend and the House in due course.

[Yvette Cooper (Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford) (Lab) [V]]

I join the Home Secretary and shadow Home Secretary in paying tribute to PC Keith Palmer, who lost his life keeping us safe four years ago, and in sending support to the Avon and Somerset officers injured in the unacceptable violence in Bristol yesterday.

Scientists estimate that there are now up to 2,000 new cases of the South African variant a day in France. Can the Home Secretary tell us how many of the 15,000 people arriving in the UK each day are travelling here from France, and does she intend to put France on the red list?

[Priti Patel]

The right hon. Lady will know that red-listing countries is a matter for my colleagues in the Department for Transport and the Department of Health and Social Care. She is absolutely right to point to the prevalence of the South African variant in France. That is why we have effective measures in place at the border, with compliance checks and upstream checks for people who are travelling to the United Kingdom, alongside measures to test road hauliers, which, as she will be aware, we have been doing in Kent.

Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill

Yvette Cooper Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading - Day 1
Monday 15th March 2021 Commons Chamber

[Yvette Cooper (Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Sir Robert Neill), a fellow Select Committee Chair.

The tragic death of Sarah Everard is obviously on all our minds. It has led women across the country to talk about our shared experiences of threats on the streets of our own towns and cities and also to express the anger that, more than 40 years after the first reclaim the night marches in Leeds, we are having the same debates all over again. In some areas, it feels like things have gone backwards. Five years ago, just 8.5% of reported rapes reached prosecution. In the last five years, that has fallen to just 1.4%. The Government have been reviewing this for two years, but in the meantime prosecution rates have got worse.

That reflects the broader near-collapse in the effectiveness of some parts of the criminal justice system. In the five years before covid hit, recorded crime rose by 40%, but the number of crimes being prosecuted fell by 30%. In just five years, hundreds of thousands fewer charges were brought, and hundreds of thousands more criminals are therefore getting away with their crimes. In West Yorkshire, recorded violent crime has shot up. The Government have passed lots of laws, but the number of people convicted of breaking them has fallen. There have been lots of changes to sentences, but fewer criminals are getting sentenced in the first place, so justice is not being done and victims are being let down. Over the last five years, the shocking truth is that it has got easier to be a criminal and harder to be a victim. We cannot let that stand.

There is an important debate to be had about the measures in the Bill, but I see nothing in them that will turn around those shocking figures, and that is what we should work across the House to do. We need the police covenant and stronger measures to support police officers and emergency workers who face attack. We need stronger sentences for the most serious of crimes, including whole-life sentences for premeditated child murder, which is one of the vilest crimes of all. I support those measures. The same should apply for premeditated kidnap, rape and murder, but that is not currently in the Bill. There should also be stronger penalties for rape and stalking, but those are not currently in the Bill. It would, I think, be wrong if we ended up with higher sentences for peaceful protest and public nuisance than for stalking. That would be to get the balance wrong.

I put forward measures last year based on Home Affairs Committee work to extend the register and monitoring provisions for dealing with sex offenders to cover repeat perpetrators of domestic abuse and stalking, to stop them moving from one victim to the next and destroying people’s lives because no one is keeping track or joining the dots. I hope the Government will accept Baroness Royall’s amendment in the other place. If they do not, I will table the same measures to this Bill, and I hope that support can be built for them.

There are further measures, which I hope first to discuss with Ministers, that I hope could increase the prosecution rate for assault and domestic abuse, where there have been such problems. The Government are right to place a duty on councils and the police to co-operate in tackling serious violence, but we should be explicit about including the youth service in that; that is not currently part of the Bill.

The Home Secretary will know, even from today’s debate, that there is cross-party alarm about some of the measures in the Bill that go against the British tradition of free speech and peaceful protest. In the coalfields, there is strong support for the work of the police, but people have long memories of things such as the policing of the miners’ strike, so there is also strong support for proper safeguards to protect peaceful protest.

In the Bill, several powers—the broad wording on noise disruption, even though we know few protests are silent, because people want their voices to be heard; the broad powers given to the Home Secretary on serious disruption; and the statutory public nuisance offences with sentences of up to 10 years for doing things that simply might risk causing serious annoyance—are too broad. Every one of us will have seen protests that we thought were seriously annoying, but we do not believe that they should have been stopped. We know, too, that when people protested outside the Iranian embassy for Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, the embassy could well have argued that the protests were disruptive to their activities or caused serious annoyance, but none of us would have wanted those protests to be stopped. I urge the Home Secretary to withdraw those measures, to re-consult on them and to try to build consensus not just on them, but on the other, wider, measures in the Bill, so that we can all support taking the action needed to cut crime.

Policing and Prevention of Violence against Women

Yvette Cooper Excerpts

Monday 15th March 2021 Commons Chamber

[Priti Patel]

I thank my hon. Friend for her comments and her questions. She is of course absolutely right; this is a collective effort, for everyone to be part of shaping future strategy, policy and legislation. We can do that together, which is why it is unprecedented and incredible that 78,000 people have responded to the survey. We are really pleased about that, because we do want to encourage people to contribute. As you have heard me say, Mr Speaker, I encourage all Members of this House to play their role and join that contribution.

[Yvette Cooper (Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford) (Lab)]

May I join in the expressions from across the House of deep sympathy and condolences to Sarah Everard’s family following her tragic death? Women across the country have been moved to talk about the experiences that we all share, and that no one should have to endure, of feeling threatened and unsafe on our own streets. Eight months ago, I put forward measures to deal with repeat perpetrators of abuse and stalking: to be able to register them; and to be able to prevent the problem where they move from one victim to another, no one keeps track and they get away with it. At that time, Ministers said that those measures were not needed. Has the Home Secretary looked at this again? Will she work with me, Baroness Royall and Paladin to make sure we can bring in these strong measures, take action against repeat perpetrators and keep more women safe?

[Priti Patel]

The right hon. Lady is absolutely right about the points that she has been raising and the measures at large. There is something about perpetrators and their serial offending that has to be addressed—there is no question about that. Of course this does link predominantly to many of the criminal justice outcomes and the wider debate that this House will be having, not just later today, but over future weeks. I will be very candid: we will look at all measures, and rightly so. We should be doing everything possible to keep women safe—and indeed everybody safe. The behaviour of serial perpetrators and offenders is deeply corrosive and damaging, and obviously it has dreadful, dreadful implications and consequences. So we will be happy to continue not just to look at these measures, but, right now, with the violence against women and girls consultation that is under way, to engage with others and follow up on these points.

Oral Answers to Questions

Yvette Cooper Excerpts

Monday 8th February 2021 Commons Chamber

[Priti Patel]

My hon. Friend makes some very good, strong and important points that, absolutely, the British public support the removal of foreign national offenders, those who come to our country to cause harm, and also those who are, quite frankly, making asylum claims that are not legitimate. We intend to introduce legislation later this year. I have spoken frequently about the need for a firm but fair asylum system, with fairness to target those who genuinely need our help. I have already spoken about one new safe and legal route that this Government have supported. Absolutely, fairness is needed, and firmness is needed to stop abuse of our system and to make sure that we remove those who come to our country to create harm and participate in criminality. I should remind my hon. Friend—he will know this—that Labour has been campaigning against that over the past 12 months.

[Yvette Cooper (Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford) (Lab) [V]]

The South African variant has now been identified on many continents, and the risks to the vaccine programme are concerning. Can the Home Secretary confirm, following her letter to me last week, that even under her future plans, the majority of passengers will not be covered by hotel quarantine, no one will be tested on arrival before going on public transport, and less than one in four travellers will get a follow-up phone call check? Is this worrying information correct, and why are there all these gaps?

[Priti Patel]

The answer to the question is no, because as I have repeatedly said in this Chamber throughout the pandemic, all our measures are kept under review. We already have 100% compliance checks taking place at our airports. Ironically, the hon. Member for Torfaen (Nick Thomas-Symonds) was complaining at me three weeks ago about queues at Heathrow airport, but those queues were there because compliance checks were being undertaken. It is absolutely right that those checks take place, including through the passenger locator form, the pre-departure testing, and the impacts and liabilities that are now on the carriers.

I have already stated that my colleagues across Government will report to the House on the subject of hotel quarantining, but it is really important to say that, yes, there are concerns about new variants. We are working across Government—and, I have to say, a lot of people are working valiantly on the frontline—on vaccine roll-out, but we keep all our measures under review, obviously to protect the vaccine but also to ensure that as the number of passengers coming into the country reduces, full checks are in place.

Health Measures at UK Borders

Yvette Cooper Excerpts

Wednesday 27th January 2021 Commons Chamber

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

Now we go to the Chair of the Home Affairs Committee, Yvette Cooper.

[Yvette Cooper (Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford) (Lab) [V]]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I welcome these measures, but they do not go far enough to deliver a comprehensive system. The Brazil and South Africa variants have been identified across several continents, and in the first wave, less than 1% of new cases came from China. The overwhelming majority came from European countries that the Government said were low risk at the time. May I ask the Home Secretary about the number of people likely still to be arriving who are not covered by quarantine hotels, who do not have to take further tests on arrival, and who will be able to go straight on to the public transport system from Heathrow or wherever they arrive? Can she confirm that that is likely still to be thousands of people each day, and does she think that that is wise?

[Priti Patel]

I thank the right hon. Lady for her question. First, it is important—and I come back to this point—that every measure that has been introduced across Government has provided degrees of protection; various layers and levels of protection against transmission of the virus. She has heard me say that travel is down 90% compared with this time last year. Travel bans are in place for countries that are red-listed, and that will continue. The announcement today will reduce the number of travelling passengers—I want to emphasise that—because people should simply not be travelling.

Border Force has given me examples, and I will call out some of them. At St Pancras, people have even been turning up with their skis, which is clearly not acceptable. We see plenty of influencers on social media showing off where they are in the world—mainly sunny places. Going on holiday is not an exemption, and it is important that people stay at home.

Regarding the measures that have been announced today and quarantining, the hotel measures and package in particular are under discussion right now, including their application and administration. The right hon. Lady speaks about people getting on to public transport. We want absolutely to reduce the risk of people travelling in that way, so the Government are working through measures right now on how people can travel to hotels and how they will quarantine. I have already spoken about the checks that will be put in place for individuals who are in self-isolation.

UK Border: Covid Protections

Yvette Cooper Excerpts

Tuesday 26th January 2021 Commons Chamber

[Priti Patel]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Throughout the pandemic, we should all reflect on the way in which it has changed all our lives, but also on how it has touched our lives in many, many ways, and sad ways. All our measures have been under review, and that will continue at the border and with regard to the vaccine roll-out, as my hon. Friend points out.

[Yvette Cooper (Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford) (Lab) [V]]

The Home Secretary lifted all the self-isolation rules for travellers on 13 March last year. In the following 10 days, up to 10,000 people with covid arrived in the UK, making the pandemic worse. Lessons must be learnt this time. Further delays in strengthening quarantine and testing are a serious problem. Can she tell me why we saw crowded scenes at Heathrow on Friday at the UK border—the very opposite of quarantine? Is it true that for months people have been waiting for hours in those queues in unsafe circumstances? Is it true that the Border Force lifted some of the checks that she just said were being applied to 100% of passengers, because those queues were unsafe?

[Priti Patel]

The Chair of the Home Affairs Committee will be aware, with regard to her comments about last year, that the advice from Government was to stay at home, and clearly the point of that was not to travel. She asked, rightly, about the scenes at Heathrow airport at the weekend, and the fact is that those queues materialised because of the compliance checks that Border Force had put in place. I would like to thank Heathrow airport, because, as she will also be aware, we—colleagues in Border Force—work with the airport operators on social distancing measures at the airport. That is a joint piece of work that takes place, and all airports take responsibility for their work and how they manage their flows. Border Force, in particular, is there to enforce the checks, as it does now, achieving 100% coverage. It is also now working with London Heathrow airport’s assistant organisation—its contractors—HAL, which is also working as a triage function to make sure that people are being checked. I think the British public and the travelling public would just like that reassurance and that welcome news that checks are in place. If that means queues, obviously, we are working with airport operators in terms of how they are supported and triaged as arrivals come into the airport.

Police National Computer

Yvette Cooper Excerpts

Monday 18th January 2021 Commons Chamber

[Kit Malthouse]

That is absolutely right. I understand that the police were informed, along with the senior levels of the Home Office, on the Monday after the incident occurred, and they are part of the Gold group command that is dealing with the incident. As hon. Members will have seen from the letter that was leaked to The Times—the detailed letter that was sent round policing—the NPCC lead on this matter is very much at the table, working with us to ensure that we rectify it as soon as possible.

[Yvette Cooper (Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford) (Lab) [V]]

It is very hard to understand how 400,000 records could be deleted from such a crucial system without there being a proper back-up system in place. If this was the normal weekly process as ever, why was new coding being used? If new coding is often used, why are there not built-in safeguards? Is it true that Ministers were warned many months ago that their approach to the police national computer and database posed a significant risk to policing’s ability to protect the public? What did the Home Secretary do about that?

[Kit Malthouse]

With a large database of something like 13 million records, it is routine to use mini-programs that run on the database to deal with data. As I understand it, this new coding was put in place as a weeding request from policing itself. Obviously, to ensure that this does not reoccur, one of the questions that we will have to answer is: what went wrong not only in the writing of the code that introduced this error but in the quality and system checking that then sat behind it? Once we have gone through the exercise of ensuring that we have rectified this as much as we can, that will be exactly the kind of lesson that we learn.

There have been concerns about the process of replacing the police national computer and the police national database, but over the last few months, the Home Secretary and I have worked hard to put reset processes in place around that project. I am confident that we are now on a better footing to move forward to a brighter future for police technology.

Domestic Abuse and Hidden Harms during Lockdown

Yvette Cooper Excerpts

Thursday 14th January 2021 Commons Chamber

[Victoria Atkins]

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right to raise the needs of people living with autism and other such conditions, as she always does when the opportunity presents itself. I hope that she welcomes the mental health reforms that the Government have announced this week, which will be a real step forward in us all understanding the differences between autism and Asperger’s, and the ways in which they are wrongly treated at this point in time under the historic legislation. I also hope that she is aware of the national strategy for disabled people, which the Prime Minister is absolutely committed to publishing. Only yesterday or the day before, in fact, I attended a meeting chaired by my hon. Friend the Member for North Swindon (Justin Tomlinson), to work out across Government how we can help people with disabilities, including those who live with autism.

As to the specific points on data, sadly, there is much room for improvement when it comes to the collection of data in respect of victims. I will take away my right hon. Friend’s specific question, because I am very clear in my mind as to how those health conditions can make a person more vulnerable to exploitation and abuse, and ensuring that disabled victims of domestic abuse are better looked after will be part of our work. I will draw upon her advice and wisdom in this respect, because we want to be clear that no matter what health conditions and disabilities people are living with, they should not be victims of these terrible crimes.

[Yvette Cooper (Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford) (Lab) [V]]

Abusers exploit lockdowns to increase their control, so I welcome the “Ask for ANI” scheme, which the Home Affairs Committee called for.

On the vital issue of funding for services, can the Minister explain whether the £11 million that she announced is the same £11 million announced for the second lockdown, or is there any additional funding for this difficult third lockdown? The domestic abuse commissioner called for funding to be extended beyond March. Can she tell us whether that is happening?

[Victoria Atkins]

I thank the right hon. Lady and her Committee for the work that they do to scrutinise, rightly, the work of Government in this regard. I hope that I was clear that the £11 million was the £11 million announced in November, and that was very much directed towards helping organisations for the rest of the financial year.

We are working very closely with domestic abuse services to understand the strains that they are facing. I know from speaking to chief execs of the charities that, like a lot of frontline services, frontline workers are just feeling exhausted by having to work in these conditions and with the extra pressures that they have faced over recent months. This money is taking us up to the end of this financial year.

On domestic abuse services beyond the end of this financial year, the right hon. Lady will know that we have just had the spending review process. We are in the middle of working out allocations, but I hope that she draws some comfort, as I said to the hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley (Jess Phillips) earlier, that the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government has already committed £6 million to helping tier 1 local authorities prepare for that really important duty, set out in the Bill, to help victims in safe accommodation.

Immigration Rules: Supported Accommodation

Yvette Cooper Excerpts

Wednesday 16th December 2020 Commons Chamber

[Chris Philp]

I thank my right hon. Friend, who has a distinguished legal background, for his question. He is absolutely right: we need to deter these crossings, and we need to ensure that our legal process works effectively. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Wokingham (John Redwood) said, very often it does not do so. Despite that, we are able to return and deport quite large numbers of people if they should not be in the country or if they have committed very serious criminal offences, as we discussed a couple of weeks ago.

In relation to the question about immediate returns from 1 January, that is the policy objective of the Government—it is my objective, the Home Secretary’s objective and, indeed, the Prime Minister’s objective. But in order to effect returns, we need the agreement of the receiving country, and so my top priority, as soon as the European-level negotiations are concluded, is to seek exactly those kind of return agreements.

[Yvette Cooper (Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford) (Lab)]

The Government are about to end the only agreement that they have in a place for safe returns by ending the Dublin agreement, which will make it harder, not easier, for the Minister to complete safe returns. He told the Home Affairs Committee that there are currently no negotiations for a replacement—they have not even started—and we are only 15 days away. Will the Minister confirm what I think he just said—that asylum accommodation and support will still be available for everyone who is in this limbo for the next few months? Does that mean that with no return agreement in place and the existing support systems continuing, he is actually adding several months to the waiting times for asylum claims to be sorted out? If he had an agreement, he could just use the existing rules.

[Chris Philp]

On the Select Committee Chair’s question about accommodation and support, I can confirm that it will be available, as I have said already, because not to provide it would breach article 3. That support will be available and people will not fall into destitution.

On the negotiations, back in May—I believe it was 19 May—we tabled an EU proposal on these matters, but if that is not agreed to in the course of the current discussions, we will seek bilateral agreements with various countries. As I said to the right hon. Lady’s Committee a week or two ago, individual member states have been asked by the Commission not to engage in such discussions while the European negotiations are ongoing, so we will commence those as soon as we are able to. Even in the absence of those discussions, it is possible to raise returns cases on a case-by-case basis with member states, which, of course, we can do from 1 January. Critically, the new provisions prepare the way—they lay the foundations—for agreements that we may reach in future, besides facilitating case-by-case action.

Finally, although currently in force, the Dublin regulations have not been terribly effective. The right hon. Lady will know that the numbers we successfully return under Dublin are really rather small, numbering in the low hundreds per year. I am confident that, through active negotiation, not only can we replace Dublin but we can improve on it.